


The Birds and The Bees Fly in Moominvalley

by OpheliaRising



Category: Finnish Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:00:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaRising/pseuds/OpheliaRising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mamma, said Moomintroll one summer morning, "How did I come to be? (warning for moominpegging)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Birds and The Bees Fly in Moominvalley

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a conversation on #yuletide IRC, and is based on the books by Tove Jannsan, particularly the first book, "The Moomins and the Great Flood". It was betaed with the generous help of whetherwoman and veracious. My favorite beta comment was veracious's suggestion that there ought to be a vibrator called the Moominstick, which might prove popular in Finland.
> 
> Written for Truth

 

 

"Mamma," said Moomintroll one lovely summer morning when he was very young, "How did I come to be?"

Moominmamma looked at Moominpappa above Moomintroll's head, and their eyebrows made dancing motions at one another. At last Moominmamma sighed, and Moominpappa stroked his tail thoughtfully and went away into the polka-dotted room. 

"You were a little seed, and then you grew," said Moominmamma.

"Like Tulippa?" asked Moomintroll, and ran to the window to look outside, for it was such a very beautiful day.

"No, not much like Tulippa at all," said Moominmamma, and Moomintroll nodded and ran outside to find a flusterflower for Sniff.

*

"Mamma," said Moomintroll one evening after dinner, when he was a little older yet, "How did I come to be? I do not think I was a seed." He held his hands out in front of himself and curled his fingers in tightly, trying to imagine them as leaves sprouting out of the him-seed.

Moominmamma looked around, but Moominpappa was nowhere in sight. 

"A fairy brought you to our window one very starry night," said Moominmamma.

For the next two weeks, Moomintroll secretly stayed awake after all the lights in the house were turned off. He would sneak outside and look at the stars to wait for a fairy, but none arrived. "Perhaps one must be inside, so that they can leave a Moomin at the window," thought Moomintroll. "Perhaps this is one of the rules of fairies."

So for the next two weeks he waited inside, looking anxiously out his window, but no fairies came, no matter how starry the night. Eventually he became very tired, so he gave up on his waiting and forgot about the fairies for a time, for they must be very fickle creatures indeed, fairies, not to have rewarded his patient vigils.

*

One very early morning when Moomintroll was older still, he woke before his usual hour, when the sun was not yet thinking waking-thoughts in its bed and all the day-flowers were still tightly closed. 

"I want a marshmallow," thought Moomintroll, so he stole into the kitchen on silent toes, not even waking Sniff. The marshmallows were kept in a large jar with a silver lid, and Moomintroll stood on his tippy-toes to pull it off the shelf. He was sorting through the jar to find the perfect marshmallow -- not too soft, not too hard, and shaped like a cloud exactly two hours before a gentle rain -- when he heard a strange noise.

It was coming from the bedroom of Moominmamma and Moominpappa.

Moomintroll and his silent toes snuck over to their door, but it was closed and he could not see the sound-maker. So he pressed his snout to the door and closed one eye, then squinted with the other one to see inside through the keyhole. 

The sun was still in its bed, but on that particular night there was a great congregation of glow-worms, dancing in a glow-worm celebration for a particular glow-worm holiday, and Moomintroll could see by their light and hear through the tiny opening of the keyhole, though because it was so tiny he could not see very _much_.

Moominpappa was the one making the noises. Moomintroll could see him lying on the large, fluffy bed, with his tail pulled up behind him and its tip next to his face, where his hand clutched it as he sometimes did during the day. He looked so very funny. "Perhaps this is how he sleeps," Moomintroll thought, but then he made the noise again and it did not sound like a particularly sleepy noise.

Moomintroll shifted to one side on his knees, trying to see better. The view through the keyhole shifted too, and Moomintroll could make out Moominmamma kneeling on the bed. She was facing the sleeping -- no not sleeping, for he moved just then -- Moominpappa. She lifted her hand and brought it down. _Fffpht_ , it went, when it hit Moominpappa's furry backside. "This," thought Moomintroll, "is the sound I first heard."

This went on for some time, and Moomintroll wondered what it was that Moominpappa had done wrong to warrant such a beating. Usually Moomintroll got spanked only once or twice, and then only when he had been particularly horrible. Moominpappa must have done something terrible indeed.

At last the hitting stopped, though Moominpappa continued to make the not-very-sleepy-at-all noises. They didn't sound like pain, Moomintroll thought suspiciously, and concluded that he did not understand grownups at all. He watched through the keyhole as Moominmamma stood and walked towards the door.

"Oh no," thought Moomintroll, "I will be caught for sure, and then it will be spankings for me too!" But Moominmamma walked past the door to the dresser, and in a few seconds walked back. She was holding a short, stick-looking object, which seemed to be attached to a tangle of straps. She knelt back on the bed.

This Moomintroll did not understand at all. She used the straps to attach the stick to herself, then seemed to poke Moominpappa with her hips and the stick, over and over. Moominpappa made more of the strange noises, louder, and beside his face his tail quivered madly. "Ah ah ah," said Moominpappa at last, loudly, then Moominmamma sat back and stopped with the poking. There were just enough glow-worms for Moomintroll to see that she was smiling. 

She removed the stick and its harness, and dropped it on the floor, then snuffled up next to Moominpappa, making kiss-noises. These Moomintroll recognized, but he did not understand how they were related to the stick or the punishment. Grownups, he decided, were very odd indeed, and Moomintroll was glad that he would not be grownup for a long time.

*

"Mamma," said Moomintroll one day at lunch, in between mouthfuls of sandwich and jam, "How did I come to be? I asked the Marabou Stork, and he said that there were no such things as fairies." 

Moominmamma looked at Moominpappa above Moomintroll's head, and Moominpappa pulled his tail to his pocket and stroked it there.

"Well," said Moominmamma, "Hidden in far away secret caves, there is a very secret spice called Moominstick. And you were a Moominstick, until one day I asked a Lovebug for directions to the cave and found you. Then I kept the Moominstick-that-was-you inside myself, near my heart for many days, and it turned into you as you are now."

Moomintroll thought about this for a moment. He imagined that Moominsticks must smell a little like cinnamon, and perhaps like wet leaves because sometimes he himself smelled like wet leaves and did not know why. Then an idea occurred to him.

"Is that what you were doing last night?" he asked. "Putting a Moominstick into Moominpappa to make a baby come to be?"

Both Moominmamma and Moominpappa turned pink, and Moominpappa made a strangled-sounding noise. "No," said Moominmamma at last, "No, that's not what we were doing at all."

 


End file.
